Month: March 2019

Today, social media is increasingly being used as a tool for marketing and advertising. However, if done poorly, you run the risk of tarnishing your brand and being viewed as a spammer. Here are a few simple etiquette rules for social media.

Avoid Follow/Unfollow

Today, I was notified that I had a new follower on Instagram. After seeing that it was a local business, I decided to follow back. Trying to develop relationships with local businesses is an important aspect of my social media efforts. It wasn’t until a few hours later that I had an opportunity to visit their Instagram page. But when I did, I noticed that they had already unfollowed me. They had no actual interest in my content or in developing a relationship – they simply wanted to show me their products. This isn’t much different from spamming and does not present a positive view of your organization.

Create Content Not Advertisements

People are unlikely to follow you on social media to see what you have on sale this week. People want to see your personality, what your business stands for, and who you are. Of course, all businesses will occasionally create content that advertises their goods and services, but if that’s all you do, expect to be unfollowed. Social media is for growing communities – not a new tool to spam me with ads.

Stop Nagging Me About Services

On LinkedIn, in particular, this is common. Someone friends you and – wanting to grow your own circle of connections – you accept. Then, you get a private message about the services they offer. Viewing it for what it is – spam – you ignore the message. A week later, another message. Then a month later, a message asking if you got the previous message. Yes, I got them all. I chose to ignore them because I wasn’t interested in your product at this time. Additionally, I now am distrustful of you as I see you too are a spammer.

Like/Know/Trust

Want to develop your social media the right way? Use the like/know/trust model. First, users like you. They see your posts, enjoy your photos, laugh at your jokes. After a while, users feel that they know you. The’ve seen your stuff, they know what you stand for, and they feel that they understand you and your company. Finally, users trust you. They have seen you in action and know you’re knot a spammer. They recognize that you provide valuable content they want. They know you’re someone they could reach out to if they need your services. That’s the formula for success. You develop community and relationships, and people see you as a valuable asset instead of a spammer.

Do Unto Others

The golden rule applies to social media just as it does anywhere else. When you’re engaging in social media efforts, ask yourself how you would view another business if they used the same tactics. If it’s not favorable, don’t do it.

During the past year, it has become increasingly obvious to me that many people don’t understand Return on Investment (ROI). Looking back, I realize this was not something I learned about until a businessman explained it to me. At its simplest, return on investment is exactly what it sounds like – the amount of return that an organization receives on their investment. However, this will be viewed differently based on the type of organization an individual works for – government, non-profit, or for profit entity.

Government Organizations

Government is the simplest to define as they have no ROI nor are they interested in ROI. This is not intended to be cynical, it’s just true. Regardless of your political affiliation, you can point to government programs that are riddled with waste. Why? Because government entities are not required to prove their programs work. We, the taxpayers, are forced to pay taxes regardless of the success of the programs we are asked to support. Deep inside, this is how we all want to work – we don’t really want management to access the value we bring to an organization, we simply want to be paid more.

Non-Profit Organizations

Non-profit organizations are a little more focused on ROI. However, their definition is far less stringent than a for-profit organization. For the non-profit, ROI is simply the appearance of value. Since non-profit organizations receive donations from individuals and entities, they only need to convince donors that their programs work. Even if they don’t, many will still give money to support the cause even when there is no ROI. Just like broken government programs, we can all point to non-profit organizations that continue to operate even though they are having no positive impact on the mission they support.

For Profit Organizations

Finally, we have for-profit organizations. In these organizations, everything is measured based on cost and benefits. ROI is simply the value something generates beyond the cost. This is absolutely critical for corporations. If money is continually invested in ways that generate less revenue than they cost, the business will quickly go bankrupt. If you want something, present your request based on the return on investment. Feelings and preferences have no place here. Can you directly tie your request to a financial reward? If not, don’t bother asking!

Why should you care?

The type of organization you work for will determine the ROI model used. Understanding that model will help you know how to argue for a raise, get a new computer, purchase additional tools, etc. If you work for a for-profit organization, decisions will be guided by how much money the business will get back from what they spent. If you can argue that your suggestion will yield more than it costs, you will be far more likely to see your request granted. However, if you argue based on your preference or feelings, you will likely find that your request is denied. Likewise, arguing that you bring substantially more to the organization than you are paid is the single best way to argue for a raise.

Today, it’s becoming increasingly popular for programers to be ‘opinionated’. In the software world, to be ‘opinionated’ means to believe your way is the right way. Other ways are wrong, and your way is right. There’s nothing wrong with having a preference, but the truth is that there is little room for opinion in software engineering. Software projects need to meet requirements such as budget, programmers available for maintenance, stability, etc. Championing a new language or framework may be fun, but when you leave, are there other developers available to support the project? Even if your preferred framework is better, it’s of no concern to a client when the language dies for lack of users and they have to pay to have the application rewritten.

A computer science student I know is all about Julia. Honestly, I’ve never met a single Julia developer or even seen a line of code in that language. On the list of popular languages, it’s not even a blip on the radar. However, this student insists that Julia is the way of the future. I’m not sure where he’s hoping to find work, but it won’t be in the local area. I remember the same thing when Scala came out. Every video I saw spent half their time attacking Java development. As above, I know absolutely no projects written Scala nor do I know any local companies either using it or planning to.

How should we select frameworks and languages?

The answer is actually pretty simple. Commercial software development has one purpose – to support some business use case. As such, frameworks must be chosen to support commercial business. What things make a language or framework commercially viable? It should be stable, have tools available to support commercial usage, and be widely used such that new developers can easily be found in the future. Additionally, it should have adequate resources available to help when you get stuck.

Commercial application development is no place for experimenting with new frameworks or basing your decision on an opinion about what is better. Find commercially viable frameworks and save yourself the hassle of supporting your new framework that may be dead in a year. A programmer’s purpose it to write commercially viable software – period.